Game review: The Ouya

The Ouya is an interesting little device. The product of a highly successful Kickstarter funding drive, it has been greeted with derision and joy. The media have been scornful, raising issues that would have been ironed out in pre-production testing by a larger company. However, owners have generally been quite happy with their purchase, especially those who understood what the device represented - a way to get Android games on to your TV with a proper wireless controller.

Set-up is very straightforward and I had it up and running in just a few minutes. I had to open an account to get started, which surprised me a little, but that was very quick, too.

The online store is easy to navigate and I quickly downloaded and installed the Mame emulator, and pointed it to all the artwork, sound and rom files it needed on my USB stick. Without a doubt, The Ouya is a superior experience to any other method I've used to get Mame on to a TV.

Of course, there are many other emulators available as well, for all manner of consoles.

I tried the PlayStation 1 emulator and found it to be close to perfect. A new version of the console has been recently released which has doubled the on-board memory from 8 to 16GB and features a revised controller.

It's been successful enough to sell out in a couple of weeks, so you can see that the prophets of doom were incorrect last year when they pronounced the Ouya dead on arrival.

This is, however, a small company producing a niche product that will appeal more to those who know what they're getting into than those who want a competitor to the XBox or PlayStation.Ian Knott